Janitorial services contractor sentenced to prison for overbilling for work at the Alamodome

A San Antonio contractor convicted of overbilling the city for janitorial services at the Alamodome has been sentenced to 25 months in federal prison, according to the San Antonio Express-News.

Geoffrey Comstock, owner of Go Professional Environmental Management, was also ordered to pay more than $358,000 in restitution, according to the article published Nov. 5.

The sentence handed down by Senior U.S. District Judge David Guaderrama was well below the 37 to 46 months recommended by federal sentencing guidelines.

Comstock’s lawyer, Mike McCrum, told the Express-News that the overbilling arose because of changes in the city’s billing process. McCrum said Comstock had a verbal agreement with a then-city employee about the billing.

Comstock’s company worked at the Alamodome from March 2002 until the contract was suspended in October 2015. The contract was terminated in March 2016, according to the article.

McCrum argued at trial in December 2017 that Comstock did not knowingly commit fraud. He argued that the problem was the process, by which the city employee asked the company to estimate the costs of cleaning up after an event, and paid the company based on the estimate rather than actual hours. He said the city waited 13 years to ask Comstock to produce supporting documentation for more than 2,000 invoices.